NAO MAGNUS: A PILOT STUDY FOR THE USE OF ROBOTICS IN HISTORY DIDACTICS

The NAO robot was investigated as a teaching assistant in the Didactics of Language [1,2], Mathematics [3], Art [4], Music [6], STEM and Physical Education [5]. “NAO Magnus” is a pilot research project held at the Forspicom Department of the University of Bari Aldo Moro, that explores the NAO robot as a co-teacher in the discipline of History with primary school students. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first one in this field, and it utilizes the ALLandMarkDetection vision module and the Naomarks to engage students in a sort of board game where some cards representing historical images with Creative Commons license, have to be chosen by students to answer specific questions. Moreover, the robot has been programmed with the Choreographe software to interpret the character of Alexander Magnus in the first person, and questions have been elaborated with ChatGPT into engaging dialogs. The paper shows the results of the testing, where data were collected anonymously with a questionnaire on two occasions: the first one a training course where teachers contributed to the improvement of programming, and the second one in a workshop offered during “Fiera Didacta” in Florence, the most important fair for school innovation in Italy. The project will be further investigated in classrooms to evaluate, discuss, and enhance the adoption of educational and social robotics in teaching humanistic disciplines.